CTIA 2009

Palm is now showing off some of the first third-party applications developed for webOS and the Palm Pre. They're also showing off the just-announced PalmOS emulator for old Palm apps.

Palm Pre webOS apps

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

At CTIA, the webOS demo apps were a movies application, Sprint TV, a flight tracker, and a NASCAR app. Three of the four included streaming video, which we have to say looked very impressive. The resolution and frame rate were as good as we've seen for streaming on any commercial phone and network.

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Otherwise, the apps were fairly straightforward. They worked well, but none really seemed to test the limits of what webOS can do. We have yet to see a real game, for example.

The loading time was somewhat surprising. It wasn't terribly long, but since webOS apps are just beefy web pages, we expected them to start almost instantly; they don't.

See a video tour of these webOS apps below:

PalmOS emulator

Palm was also showing off the new PalmOS emulator, which lets you run old PalmOS apps on a new webOS phone like the Pre.

Like most emulators, it runs as an app, and presents a whole separate experience within that app, like a phone within a phone; PalmOS app icons don't appear in your main webOS app menu, for example; everything is within the emulator.

PalmOS emulator for webOS

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

photo by Russ Hickman

Although you get a virtual PalmOS phone within the emulator, the point is to let you run old apps, so you can't make a call from within the emulator, for example.